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Funky Winkerbean, 2/10/18

Hey, did you know that Les isn’t the only writer in the Funkyverse cast of characters? Harry Dinkle dabbles as a wordsmith as well, except instead of churning out endless paeans to his dead wife, he’s writing a novel about fictional musical pioneer Claude Barlow, and by “writing a novel” I mean he’s just stringing together a disconnected series of terrible and increasingly incomprehensible puns. This has been going for several days, and while today offers no respite from the onslaught, it at least provides a little visual interest, with panel three offering a terrifying vision of what it would be like to actually be a bunch of unpublishable and unfunny beats in a never-ending shaggy-dog story about someone named “Claude Barlow.”

The Lockhorns, 2/10/18

Shoutout to the Lockhorns for being the second syndicated comic to make a reference to a classic scene in the Bela Lugosi Dracula in less than a year, I guess? Anyway, my take here is not so much that Leroy is insulting his wife and mother-in-law’s singing or ever comparing them to ravenous wolves, but that he’s instead trying to impress his houseguest, who, with his deep widow’s peak, black-and-red ensemble, and odd overbite, is clearly a vampire himself.

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The Lockhorns, 1/11/18

I’m assuming Loretta is leaning on the life here for effect, because Leroy is dead. It’s unclear if Loretta murdered him or if he just passed away peacefully in his chair, but clearly she’s getting as much joy as she can from parading her friends through to gawk at his slovenly corpse before finally calling the coroner to come collect him.

Family Circus, 1/11/18

There’s nothing I enjoy more than seeing a Keane Kid sweating desperately in the certain knowledge that their God has abandoned them.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/11/18

So poor addled Bull and his pal are out to reminisce on the football field and have brought a snow … shovel? Wait, that’s not a shovel for snow. That’s a spade, for dirt. They’re planning on digging a damn GRAVE for SOMEBODY

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Beetle Bailey, 12/14/17

The thing about this strip that most irritates me is that it presumes an entirely unearned affection readers have for Beetle Bailey’s antic wackiness. “Ha ha, that’s our Camp Swampy!” says literally nobody. But to get into the specific details that annoy me, let’s take on the fact that panel two is a crowd scene and Beetle Bailey has tons of established but rarely used characters to draw from and yet the background is populated by people we’ve enver seen before. I’m not sure who I feel more drawn to: the two ladies running by in wide-eyed, manic glee, one of whom I’m reasonably sure is holding a giant knife over her head, or the dead-eyed, joyless guy who seems to be thinking “Really? I’m the only black person in this strip and they’ve got me playing basketball? Really?”

Spider-Man, 12/14/17

Oh, hey, MYSTERY SOLVED, it turns out that scruffy dude hanging out in the swamp rescuing Mary Jane from various reptiles wasn’t some random low-level superhero/Marvel character at all but was actually the Incredible Hulk! Or, I guess, it was Bruce Banner, who’s a nuclear physicist and … I’m not sure why he’d be in a swamp, actually? Or why he’d have the knife skills to chop of a snake’s head to save MJ? Still, the important thing is that, as scientists who occasionally transform into monstrous green creatures, Doctors Banner and Connors are gonna have a lot to talk about, eventually! Like, for instance, that terrible deep gash on Dr. Connors’ leg, and whether he should just double down and root around in his box of potions to see if he can find one that will regrow two limbs.

Lockhorns, 12/14/17

Usually characters trapped in endless, unchanging comic-book time go through their eternal-now lives blissfully unaware of the strangeness of their existence. However, thanks to this seemingly innocent question posed by their therapists, the Lockhorns, who have been in their middle age for almost fifty years now, have been forced to confront the eternity that stretches before them. Having both long consoled themselves that at least death will free them from their mutual prison, they are understandable despondent.